Project News
Key Insights from “Intergenerational Environmental Justice”
A new article summary that rethinks climate justice by centring children’s experiences, rights, and participation in the present.
We are pleased to share a new child-friendly summary of “Intergenerational Environmental Justice” by Florencia Paz Landeira, recently published in EUNOMÍA. Revista en Cultura de la Legalidad.
This piece contributes to ongoing discussions within the Youth Climate Justice project by challenging one of the most familiar ideas in environmental law: that justice for children is primarily about protecting the future. Instead, the article invites us to reconsider how we understand time, responsibility, and participation in the context of the climate crisis.
Drawing on insights from youth climate litigation and interdisciplinary perspectives, the work highlights a key tension: while environmental harm is unfolding rapidly, legal systems often respond too slowly to adequately address children’s lived experiences. This temporal gap raises important questions about how law recognizes children—not only as future beneficiaries, but as present rights-holders.
The article also offers a conceptual shift by proposing a “postpaternalist” approach to intergenerational environmental justice, which is the key hypothesis of the YCJ project. This perspective does not reject the need for protection, but seeks to move beyond models where adults act solely on behalf of children. Instead, it emphasizes the importance of recognising children and young people as participants in shaping legal and policy responses to climate change.
This new summary makes these ideas more accessible to younger audiences, while preserving the core contribution of the article: a call to rethink intergenerational justice as something that unfolds in the present, through shared but unequal responsibilities.
This article was first published in EUNOMÍA on October 17, 2025. Access here to read the full article: https://doi.org/10.20318/eunomia.2025.9856
You can access a summary of this article Intergenerational Environmental Justice.